Why Blog?

Why Blog?
This is a post for my JHU Technology and the New Science of Educators course. I was trying to decide how to present information about what a blog is and I decided that what better way than to do it than within a blog post! Plus I can encourage folks to respond to my blog, since they are getting graded on their class participation. (of course anyone out there in the blogosphere is welcome to comment as well) Wow, I love the power of being in education ;)

1) For anyone out there in the blogosphere who happens upon this, take a look at this video from Commoncraft on what a blog is (my class should have already viewed this from my ppt.


2) Take a look at the blogs I have tagged on www.delicious.com (we will talk about Social Bookmarking in a couple of weeks)
Make some observations about some of the blogs you look at:

* What do you see as common components of all/most of these blogs?
* What are some things that may be very different from one blog to another?
* What are some of the audiences for these blogs?
* What are the tone of the blogs?
* Are all blogs equal? Why or why not?
* What other comments do you have about these blogs? (Remember you will be choosing a blog to follow for 2 weeks--it can be any of these or any other blog related to your educational interests)
* How are these education related blogs similar or different from any blogs you may have looked at on a more personal interest level (ie, politics, news, sports, etc)

I look forward to your comments!

Information Literacy

Have you heard the comment, just because it is on the Internet doesn't mean it is so ? It is important that we know how to validate our sources on the internet and that we teach our students, who have grown up knowing that the internet is the place to find the answers to questions,how to evaluate the reliability of what they find.

List 3 things that you learned during your exploration of Information Literacy from November Learning. After taking the Information Literacy Quiz, were you Somewhat Saavy, Moderately Saavy, or Downright Nerdy?

What was your reaction to the Martin Luther King website? Did you try finding the publisher of any other websites?

Will the information from the exploration impact how you use the internet personally? With your students?